


war waits for no one (but peace does)

by n_owsy



Category: Minecraft (Video Game), Video Blogging RPF
Genre: Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Canon Compliant, Character Study, Dream Team SMP Spoilers, Eventual Happy Ending, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Character Death, POV Second Person, Platonic Relationships, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Prompt Fic, Spoilers, Toby Smith | Tubbo is Not Okay, TommyInnit-centric (Video Blogging RPF), but also hurt n comfort because i’m personally soft for the ending, here i detail how messed up tommy could be after the trauma, hey clingytwt. come get your angst, is it technically a happy ending? it’s more open than happy but eh, kind of a character study?, no beta we die like tubbo in the festival, references to the exile arc
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-23
Updated: 2021-01-23
Packaged: 2021-03-15 01:33:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,247
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28930311
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/n_owsy/pseuds/n_owsy
Summary: The sun goes down, eventually — as everything does. The clouds disappear behind darker skies. The music eventually stops and both of you need to go.You leave, but your heart is lighter and you smile more than you have for the past few weeks.(Peace isn’t constant.But it is always there, tucked in the corner of everybody’s heart like a reminder of a life anybody could have and everybodywillhave — so you carry it with you for as long as you live.)[POV: you’re TommyInnit, trying to cope with your possible death and juggling all that emotional baggage that you don’t have time to unload while trying to associate peace with somethingactually peaceful.]
Relationships: Clay | Dream & Toby Smith | Tubbo & TommyInnit, Toby Smith | Tubbo & TommyInnit
Comments: 8
Kudos: 29





	war waits for no one (but peace does)

**Author's Note:**

> writing prompt by my values teacher. man. i wish my school let me write like this more regularly because how will i ever be a writer without my metaphors?
> 
> can’t say much about the quality, but i hope you guys read through this. wrote it in second pov because i was feeling like it today, so have fun :)
> 
> POV: you’re tommyinnit and you’re trying to cope with your inevitable death while trying to associate peace with something _actually peaceful._
> 
> [previously named: peace and quiet]

Peace is a _such_ a wild concept for you.

You’re not that familiar with it, but at least you know some semblance of it enough to recognize it.

So you start with what you know: peace isn’t quite like those early mornings where the roosters crow their greetings at the sun, and those mornings would come after a late night. It’s cold and you’re grumpy and you are _so_ tired from all the mining and grinding, but it’s worth it to see your resources grow. Your muscles ache and your bones complain as you strap on the gear, but even then, you don’t see the need to howl at the sun to help warm you up. 

Peace isn’t quite like that one moment where you open the door and you meet him: your fellow child soldier, your former president, your spy — _your friend_. No, it’s a different feeling of _something else_. You don’t bother trying to know what it is, no matter how much it tries to force itself into spilling out of your throat like an ugly, bitter mess. You need to prepare _now_ — and you don’t have the time to consider your own emotions when you’re quite literally facing your own death.

Peace isn’t quite like those moments where you walk along the weathered yet sturdy wooden paths, a remnant of an era that you hold dear in your heart — but you can no longer remember. You want to remember it, _you really do_ , but your mind shags on something as insignificant as fucking trauma or something because you can’t recall those memories without being reduced to a pathetic mess. You can’t show weakness in front of everyone — especially in front of Tubbo now, who holds your hand with fingers that can’t stop shaking and tells you wobbly lies about his well-being — _because_ _who the hell are you kidding?_ You don’t even have the balls to process your own goddamn trauma by yourself.

You drag your feet along it, cursing as your foot catches on one of the planks. But Tubbo is also with you and as he steadies you, there is something deep inside of you that makes peace with the fact that your blood was spilled here _on this spot_ at some point by an arrow in a duel of honor. Your blood spilled for a country that barely remembered you. It’s not quite peace — but it’s your own twisted version of peace, and that’s the only kind that you’ve ever known and relied on this god-awful world.

But the blood that once soaked the planks is gone now. You don’t know who scrubbed the hell out of this, but you’re thankful, and you make a silent reminder to ask around later about who did it so you can say thank you.

You try to silently laugh at the thought of coming out alive of this mess that started with those fucking discs,  but it bubbles out of you and _you’re laughing_. You’re laughing at nothing, and _this is fucking embarrassing.  
_

You interrupt the silent dawn with your laughter, and it hurts your ears to hear that jagged sound out of place in the relative calmness.   


(Even then, you can’t help but notice that even your laughter is out of place in this foreign land you can’t quite remember. But you fought and sacrificed everything for it — _so that should mean something, right?_ )

It’s alright. That’s alright as you try to clamp it down and you fail and you try many times until you’ve got your composure back because Tubbo doesn’t look at you different and Tubbo doesn’t look at you warily like how other people used to skirt around you back then like you were some kind of rabid animal waiting to attack.

Tubbo holds your hand tighter even as his shaking grows noticeable, but the stubborn line to his mouth grows even starker against the light of the relaxed dawn falling on his face. The brooks in the distance bubble as your feet fall in sync against worn wooden planks.

And you march on, hand in hand — like the child soldiers you both are — to your death, and you still don’t know what peace is.

* * *

Peace isn’t quite what you feel after the surprise as your heart beats out of your chest at the sight of a group of people waiting by the side of the wooden path. _Bless Tubbo_ , he keeps you here and in present time as your eyes widen and you try to backtrack and nope the fuck out of here. His shaking doesn’t stop, but his hand is there and you grip it like a lifeline before you drown.  


It’s crazy that you’re _this_ afraid of a couple of grown ass men who haven’t lived through what you have lived, but you’ve learned that from time and time again: a group of people waiting for you is an omen that you’ve faced so many times and you are not about to fucking fall for it again.

But they surprise you this time.

They stand aside like guards of honor along the prime path leading up to the community house and they smile at you with a bittersweet greeting on their tongues. Tubbo lets go of your hand once. You see how he reacts to that small kind gesture as Puffy hugs him, and you turn away with something in your throat that you can’t spill but you also can’t choke down. Bad and Sam and Ant and so many other people pass you along after a brief goodbye and words of encouragement and there are so many people here that your eyes blur them altogether.

You shoot your mouth off, and you can’t stop speaking ever since and you try to process it all as you speak with everybody, cracking a smile and promising to return home. Tubbo joins in and you both walk along the prime path while many people offer you comfort.

A few faces stand out, though. Niki smiles down on both of you as she hugs you with strong arms, smelling like a bonfire and your smile wavers as you remember hugging her once like this back then in a bakery long ago and all that filled your nose were flour and flowers from a faraway time. You used to complain about how strong that smell was, and Wilbur would playfully smack your shoulder — but you miss that scent that reminded you once of home. 

Jack’s smile is wobbly, and while Tubbo hugs him — there are multiple emotions that pass through his face as he whispers reassurances for Tubbo and he falters as his eyes meet your own. You bite on your own tongue as you move on along, feeling uneasy about him, and you hate yourself right now because you can’t trust your perception of people. Who are you to judge others if you can’t even trust your emotions?

And the last of them is Eret. 

Eret looks down on you with the crown on his head, with gemstones that gleam in the early sun. The crown casts shadows on his face and it reminds you of something that you don’t want to remember in an underground room somewhere — but Tubbo stands beside you.  


You raise your chin as he speaks to you, and even with his eyes hidden behind dark shades, he is truly apologetic. He apologizes, and that is not peace that you feel. But it’s something a little more resembling like it as you lean and whisper  _Between you and me, Eret? You’ve always been the real king_ and he smiles like how he used to in the good ol’ days of the war while walking alongside you and —

Tubbo tugs on your arm.

You both know it’s time to go.

* * *

It’s not peace that you feel when you climb up the mountain with that compass in your hand. You know it’s not — it’s the _hard defiance_ settling in your gut as the reality of this situation happening hits you. You’ve always faced it ever since you crossed a spruce forest with Tubbo. You’ve always faced it while you were both talking in the boat as you rowed across an ocean. But now, it slaps you hard in the mouth with something that leaves a painfully bitter taste, and Tubbo is silent now, unlike how he was a few minutes earlier while trying to fill the silence as you swim up the mountain. It’s tense and you try to plan, but his fingers are shaking again and your grip on the water bucket is flimsy. 

Each of you try your best, though. And that’s enough.

You nudge Tubbo’s shoulder, and he grumbles. But he does look behind you to see the sun climbing up, dipping pretty colors like pink and orange in the dark sky.

It’s not quite peace that you feel after that moment, but you do feel calm. The sun climbs up. The light of the sun touches you, and there’s this small spark of hope that shines behind Tubbo’s eyes — so you share this one last sunrise with him.

(It’s good that you shared it that sunrise with him, feeling like a kid sitting on a mountain with your best friend one last time for the old times’ sake, because when the tyrant strikes — _he strikes hard_.)

* * *

It’s already evening when he blows up the  fake discs in front of you, and he laughs. Tubbo, with that burn scar that spans across the left side of his face, stands behind you as you drop your items in a hole. You want to scream.  _This is so fucking unfair,_ you want to howl but _you can’t because that’s showing weakness and you are so fucking done with letting Dream know that it hurts and it cuts deep in your heart_ as he laughs in your face.

All the remnants of your hard work blow up into tiny little non-existential piece, and both of you slide down the crater. You can’t show any kind of weakness for it beyond a muttering of  _I stayed up until fucking four a.m for this_ because it’s gone and it doesn’t matter anymore. There’s no use trying to wish it back to you.

None of this is _peace_ — you swim down a waterfall and drop down a side of the mountain as Dream taunts you and your fists shake and Tubbo clams up. His burn scar is prominent as the light from the nearby lava pools leave flickering shadows across his face, but Dream doesn’t flinch away.

Behind his mask, he points at your pain and laughs at your fear.  He reveals all the shit he did from the start and you are sick to the stomach when Tubbo speaks up — he speaks in horror as Dream clinically lays down every single thing he had done in the name of the discs like a detached psychopath merely observing his fucking victims.

He forces you down that weird elevator in his ready-to-go mancave and you feel your heart beating hard in your chest that you could barely hear his monologue about attachment or something over the sound of blood rushing in your ears.

The elevator sets on the ground and you watch in disgust at the hall of blackstone, with the discs on prominent display. You didn’t listen to his monologue bullshit — but he’s right, the attachment _is_ there — and the attachment to the discs call you closer. 

(Your attachment to Tubbo tells you to stay close, though.

So you ignore it — until Dream tells you himself to come near to observe his hall of dismay.)

The discs are set on the floor _(like a prize to be paraded around, like one of the many things that Dream has hanging over their heads)_ on top of blocks and blocks of gold. 

It’s not peace. It’s a very fragile silence that Dream breaks on his own as he tells you about broken attachments. The burnt community house, Spirit’s death and every single thing that made up that poisoned knife in his chest — he twists it deeper until he feels nothing to gain everything.

He’s powerful, and you are powerless.

But somewhere inside of you, a small part of you feels sorry for him.

You don’t have to — because this man is a _fucking bastard_ and he manipulated you and hurt so many people and he certainly doesn’t deserve your _fucking pity_ — but you can. You don’t forgive him and you still feel hatred boiling in your veins but.

There is this tiny bit of pity for him.

Pity for a man who gambled his everything to gain nothing but power and scrambled for it desperately until he got it.

Pity for a man who claimed to know everything, except for peace.

Pity for this man, drunk on victory, who lost his way along the road.

None of it is peace — this is pure, senseless hatred that gnaws on your bones and makes you grit your teeth. Hatred that consumes Dream and makes him shake as he steadily starts to lose composure, yelling your faces.

You feel pity once — but you feel nothing now. Whatever he did to himself is only his own fault, and you are not going to let yourself be drowned back again.

* * *

  
  


“ _Tubbo’s just a pawn,_ ”  Dream says calmly, watching you for that moment of truth as your jaw stubbornly locks. “ _A follower._ ”

 _“Fuck you. Tubbo is not a follower — he’s not a follower,”_ you interrupt angrily, pushing Dream away from Tubbo — Tubbo with his back against the wall and looking like he wants to fold, wants to sit down and clamp his hands over his ears. _“He is the last president, he is not just a fucking follower—“_

Dream’s lips curl in disdain and Tubbo stays silent with a blank expression that says nothing and you feel like breaking your knuckles just to break this bastard’s nose.  _ “Yeah,  _ president. _ Sucking up to Quackity, Ranboo and Fundy and everybody who told him what to do. He’s a follower — that’s all he is.” _

_“He is not,”_ you bite back angrily.  _“He is_ not _a fucking follower. You need Tubbo as much as you need me.”_

_ “I don’t need Tubbo at all. Why would I need him?” _

_ “Because without Tubbo — then what am I, dickhead?” _

* * *

Dream thinks what he says is God’s word.

And you?  


You’ve never heard of this much bullshit in your life.

He whispers of threats and he falls back into that old familiar slot where he used to tell you what to do and what not to do in exile and you want to cover your ears because _he’s right and there’s nothing you can do_.  None of this is fair and you want to scream so badly. You want to punch him across the jaw and you want to wipe the floor with his smirk. But you can’t —  _you just can’t_ , because Tubbo is with you and he’s the only person alive that you have attachment to and he matters the most to you out of everything else and _you are not going to let Dream take his one last life away because of some fucking temper tantrum._

He tells you that he  _oh-so graciously_ gives you this last chance to say goodbye as he grips Tubbo’s arm hard and pushes him towards you.

 _ “I am not going to fucking say goodbye,”_ you spit out as Tubbo stumbles towards you and you catch him. You both back away. _“_ _We are going to get out of here, alright? Every time, we’ve got away, so what makes you think that we can’t get away this time—“ _

“ _Oh, Tommy. You’ll get out of here._ ”

The blade gleams in the dim light as it flashes towards you and Tubbo tenses up.

“ _It’s just Tubbo’s time to go_.”

And your grip tightens on Tubbo, whose grip on you goes slack and he finally speaks with a sorrow that none of you have felt.  


But it’s like both of you have known that feeling for a long, long time.

His words don’t reassure you — they’re not supposed to. But they’re there to serve that purpose: to speak that one final goodbye, and the way Tubbo speaks feels like a slap to the face. You remember how optimistic he once was and now it’s like he’s coming to peace with the fact that he’s good as dead and _you can’t fucking believe this_.

(It sounds like he’s giving up.)

* * *

You don’t get to say your goodbyes.

In the final minutes, you try to stretch out the moment and you try to have more time. Time eventually goes out, and you plead with Tubbo to _please, please don’t go_ and Dream looks on without any kind of emotion whatsoever as you hug your best friend and Tubbo gently pries you away from him and you think it’s all over.

(But it’s only over until it’s not.)

Someone walks through the obsidian portal — with a golden chain dangling from his neck, in full maxed-out gear pulsing with magic that gleams in the dark and a grim set to his face.

“ _I’m sorry, Dream_ ,” Punz says with no regret in his voice. It’s just pure neutrality and professionalism from his job as a mercenary, and Dream realizes this. He backs off warily, hand resting on the axe handle hanging from his belt and you think you’ve gone into shock as you realize that he shows an emotion other than hate.

“ _You should’ve paid me more,_ ” Punz continues, with that hard look in his eyes.

People flood in through the nether portal behind Punz, and there are _so many people_ that came for both of you and you can’t believe your eyes. Hope swells in your chest like a flower in full bloom as an army emerges, and adrenaline pours through your veins as the outpour of excess magic from all the diamond and netherite gear reaches you.

And Dream?

He shows fear.

* * *

Down goes the blackstone throne of a man who thought he could float above everything else.

And down goes the man who lost everything for nothing.

You feel some semblance of justice as you step forward with a sudden _something_ blazing through your veins like golden honey. You snatch the Axe of Peace off the wall,  _what a fucking joke_ , and you step forward with no armor but the support of many other people behind you.  


And it feels great. It’s like karma came back to shoot this fucking tyrant in the foot.

It’s not peace — this isn’t what you feel as you tell him to put his items in a hole you dug. You tell him to put everything down — and you taunt him without armor as he holds his shield in front of him warily. You call him out, and some distant part of you smacks you in the arm and tells you _buddy, this would be a stupid way to die,_ but you brush that voice aside. He’s not going to kill you, and you are not afraid. 

You expected a different response. Maybe he’d try to bury the axe in your chest or you expected resistance to an extent, but whatever else you expected, it’s not this. Shock freezes you in place as he drops his netherite pants first, and everything else in his inventory follows after.

You hop down and take them giddily — and you feel liquid courage run through your blood as you snatch his gear, his potions, his totem of the undying and his weapons from him and it feels like the world has turned upside down, the tables have turned and everything has gone full circle.

It’s not peace. You are familiar with this feeling, though — it’s the feeling of victory and you are drunk on it as you grip that axe. The netherite hums in your hands as magic pulses through it in waves, and he tries to plead with you but now you have the satisfaction of shutting him out and not listening to him and _isn’t karma just sweet?_

He goes down, and you hold victory securely in your hands.

His death shocks the server, and with it, ends an era.

* * *

The confrontation still doesn’t go how you wanted it to go — but you’ve made your point. You’ve killed him twice to drive the point home that you don’t care about him as much as he does about you.

So he says something different, something urgent as he mutters with clammy hands under the dim light and desperation leaks from every crevice of the obsidian box that he’s trapped in and this time, you listen as you hold up his crossbow, aiming for his neck.

He promises you a way to bring Wilbur back.

You can’t help but listen.

* * *

At the end of the day, you spare him his one last life — and leave him to rot away in Pandora’s vault.

And at the end of the day?

You have your discs, and you have Tubbo with you.

_And you are free._

* * *

Peace isn’t quite like that untouched yet serene silence when you walk silently on the prime path by yourself. Sunlight barely filters through the leaves of spruce trees littered around the path, but as you walk through the wooden path that wraps around the eerie silence of L’Manberg’s crater, it makes you feel something. You’ve fell down from that addicting high of victory and as you walk away from the promise of knowing the secret to bringing back someone to life — you feel less and less alive. 

The silence is pretty decisive, though. You feel something about all of this. You could say it’s nostalgia, but you can argue that you’re not old enough yet to be feeling that existential crisis that normally comes with man’s natural disease of old age. Besides — you can’t feel any kind of nostalgia for New L’Manberg no matter how hard you try, _because how can you feel any kind of longing for a home you’ve never known?_  
  
It’s closer to melancholy — and maybe that’s the name you want to put on what you feel, but you don’t want to think too much about it.

You leave the crater to head for the path closer to your base, and you’re still not sure what it is.

* * *

But you think — _maybe this is peace_. 

And you think that maybe, peace comes in the brief moments during those afternoons where you sit by yourself on the bench across your altered base. You’re all alone and lost in your thoughts — until you aren’t. Tubbo, bandaged and safe and grinning at you, comes by and sits beside you, but none of you have the capacity to talk after a long day of war, or some shit.

And you know what? That’s fine. None of you need to talk. His presence comforts you, and yours assures him — so both of you sit in comfortable silence.

He brings out Mellohi, and you offer him an open smile. You both chatter away as he hands it to you and you start putting them in the ender chest. A couple of minutes pass by in conversation until you decide  _why the hell not? _ and bring out Cat to play on the jukebox.

None of you have the rest of the day, but you do have this afternoon and the night after. So you sit down to listen, and both of you smile at each other as the music drones on and on while the dusk paints the sky in brilliant hues of orange and pink hidden behind clouds. 

The dusk smudges the colors and the music lulls you to... _it’s not sleep_. It’s not that — but it’s kind of sleeping in a way. It feels like you’re floating freely through the air, but instead of being worried, you feel content. You feel safe. It’s like being carried to a faraway land as your fingertips touch clouds and you’re being carried on heaven’s silk and _you have never felt this free and light before in your life._

It clicks in.

You feel at peace.

You’re not the most optimistic, ( _to be fair — who would be in a world like this? In a world where blood is shed and wars rise up and there is senseless violence that doesn’t need to happen and people are so endlessly cruel and nothing stands forever and nobody is safe from anything?)_ but there are those moments that you still look forward to in the ceasefires. There are those moments where you reach for those rests in the song that this world sings.

You look forward to that brief moment of peace that it extends to you like an olive branch, and that’s all you need to keep on going now. You don’t have to be tirelessly optimistic in order to appreciate life as how it could be in spite of what it is right now.

The sun goes down, eventually — _as everything does._ The clouds disappear behind darker skies. The music eventually stops and both of you need to go.

You leave, but your heart is lighter and you smile more than you have for the past few weeks.

(Peace isn’t constant.

But it is always there, tucked in the corner of everybody’s heart like a reminder of a life anybody could have and everybody  _will_ have — so you carry it with you for as long as you live.)

**Author's Note:**

> personally went through all stages plus four more stages of grief rewatching the finale vod. 
> 
> i’m kind conscious of my writing at the moment, so sorry for anybody who wanted me to update the dsmp actors fic. i hope tommy’s not too out of character because this was written like a vent that i just spewed words on after feeling something and i’m not sure if this makes sense.
> 
> consider leaving a kudos/comment if you enjoyed. i’d like to see feedback, but anything works out :)
> 
> yell at me on [twitter](https://twitter.com/n_owsyy) :]! am currently on my spam acc bc i got locked out of my main lol.


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